There are certain queer times and
occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life
when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical
joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns,
and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s
expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits,
and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts
down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions,
all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how
knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles
down bullets and gun flints. And as for small
difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster,
peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself,
seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly
punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable
old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am
speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of
extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of
his earnestness, so that what just before might have
seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but
a part of the general joke. There is nothing
like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy
sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I
now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and
the great White Whale its object.

“Queequeg,” said I, when
they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and
I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off
the water; “Queequeg, my fine friend, does this
sort of thing often happen?” Without much emotion,
though soaked through just like me, he gave me to
understand that such things did often happen.

“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning
to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his oil-jacket,
was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr.
Stubb, I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen
you ever met, our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by
far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then,
that going plump on a flying whale with your sail
set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman’s
discretion?”

“Certain. I’ve lowered
for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape
Horn.”

“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning
to little King-Post, who was standing close by; “you
are experienced in these things, and I am not.
Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in
this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his
own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s
jaws?”

“Can’t you twist that
smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s
the law. I should like to see a boat’s
crew backing water up to a whale face foremost.
Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint,
mind that!”

Here then, from three impartial witnesses,
I had a deliberate statement of the entire case.
Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings
in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep,
were matters of common occurrence in this kind of life;
considering that at the superlatively critical instant
of going on to the whale I must resign my life into
the hands of him who steered the boat—
oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his
impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft
with his own frantic stampings; considering that the
particular disaster to our own particular boat was
chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck’s driving on
to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, and
considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous
for his great heedfulness in the fishery; considering
that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s
boat; and finally considering in what a devil’s
chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale:
taking all things together, I say, I thought I might
as well go below and make a rough draft of my will.
“Queequeg,” said I, “come along,
you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”

It may seem strange that of all men
sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and
testaments, but there are no people in the world more
fond of that diversion. This was the fourth
time in my nautical life that I had done the same thing.
After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion,
I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from
my heart. Besides, all the days I should now
live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived
after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain
of so many months or weeks as the case may be.
I survived myself; my death and burial were locked
up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly
and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience
sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.

Now then, thought I, unconsciously
rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here goes for
a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and
the devil fetch the hindmost.